Shared disk file systems have supported numerous applications in numerous environments. Hierarchical storage management systems have also supported numerous applications in numerous environments. Shared disk file systems and hierarchical storage management systems may even have co-operated to support applications in different environments. Shared disk file systems and hierarchical storage management systems may have supported these environments using multiple namespaces to accommodate storing data in multiple heterogeneous storage pools. Having multiple namespaces to accommodate multiple heterogeneous storage pools may have required maintaining multiple concurrent views of data. A namespace refers to an abstract container or environment configured to hold a logical grouping of unique identifiers (e.g., file names). Data storage devices may use directories as namespaces. Some systems may have presented a single namespace to an application independent of where content is stored even though the system may use multiple internal mechanisms to represent the storage locations.
Some storage pools may have been bound to a specific host (e.g., a local disk). Other storage pools may have been available to a group of hosts (e.g., shared disk). Yet other storage pools may have been available geographically, even globally (e.g., cloud storage). Some storage pools may have had specific access points (e.g., tape library) while other storage pools may have had unique representations (e.g., deduplication block pool). Storage pools may have been located using a Universally Unique Identifier (UUID). In one example, a file system may have included a set of storage pools. All these possibilities created complexity that may have compromised or limited the usefulness or interoperability of these diverse approaches.
A shared disk file system may have been installed, for example, on hosts that were connected to the same disk array in a storage area network (SAN). A shared disk file system may have relied on both SAN connectivity and local area network (LAN) connectivity. SAN connectivity may have facilitated high performance while LAN connectivity using clustered gateway systems may have facilitated efficiency and fan-out. Maintaining multiple concurrent views of data using these multiple types of arrangements may have been difficult